If you want to instantly be labeled a culinary wuss, a 'fraidy-cat, a lightweight, a pallid palate only one step up the evolutionary scale from vegetarian, order the chicken.

It's a sad but inescapable fact of restaurant life that, more often than not, the popular but typically insipid meat of this flightless fowl is included on menus solely to placate diners with an almost pathological aversion to flavor, texture or anything that might actually tickle their taste buds. Well, the signature chicken dish at Rosario Lanza's bustling Boca Raton ristorante doesn't just tickle your taste buds, it jabs them with an electric cattle prod. Hearty, savory and as soulful as James Brown with a brand-new bag, it's an appetite-busting mélange of bone-in chicken, fennel-scented Italian sausage, pleasantly bitter broccoli rabe, hot and sweet peppers, and big chunks of potato, all pan-roasted with just enough winy jus to moisten everything up. Nothing wussie about that.